SCOTT, John. A Visit to Paris in 1814; being a Review of the moral, political, intellectual and social Condition of the French Capital … Third Edition, Corrected, and with a new Preface referring to the Late Events [together with:] Paris Revisited, in 18…

'Famous good Reading' (Tackeray)

SCOTT, John. A Visit to Paris in 1814; being a Review of the moral, political, intellectual and social Condition of the French Capital … Third Edition, Corrected, and with a new Preface referring to the Late Events [together with:] Paris Revisited, in 1815, by Way of Brussels: Including a Walk over the Field of Battle at Waterloo … Second Edition. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. 1815 and 1816.

Two volumes, 8vo. Contemporary half-calf over marbled boards, spines with red lettering-pieces and ruled in gilt; pp. lxxv, 343; viii, 405; wear to extremities; light offsetting from endpapers, otherwise very good with contemporary ownership inscriptions Robert Bower to heads of title-pages.

The author and journalist Scott (1784-1821) was a friend or associate of many writers of his period, including Byron, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt and Wordsworth, and edited a number of radical and liberal journals, including The Statesman, The Censor, and Drakard's Stamford News, and was also the owner of Drakard's Paper (later renamed The Champion). Following a trip to France in 1814, Scott wrote A Visit to Paris in 1814 (London: 1815), and the following year he returned, publishing the subsequent volume in 1816. Scott's lively reports from Paris attracted much praise and reached a fourth edition in the following year; the DNB records that "On Scott and these volumes Bishop Heber wrote in 1816: 'Who is Scott? What is his breeding and history? He is so decidedly the ablest of the weekly journalists, and has so much excelled his illustrious namesake [who was also an admirer] as a French tourist, that I feel considerable curiosity about him'" (Life, i. 432). Thackeray described these books as "famous good reading" (The Newcomes, ch. XXII.). Wordsworth wrote of the second of them, "Every one of your words tells". One particularly interesting part of the second work is chapter X (Stripping of the Louvre), which considers the question of the works of art, scientific collections, and books and manuscripts seized by Napoleon and sent back to France, and the ethical issues surrounding their ownership and the problems of restitution (the chapter includes tables listing various objects plundered by the French and subsequently lost).

SKU: 2121769